


Prejudice

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27390535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Follows the episode "Bottle Fatigue." Charles was cruel to his sister, certainly - but also to a certain Lebanese immigrant.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Prejudice

When Charles Emerson Winchester III had gone to the office to place his call to the telegraph office, his emotions had been running high, eroding the internal canals he’d built to channel and contain them, and, as a result, he had been quite warm. Now, his long distance apology had been made and he shivered as sweat dried on his skin. 

It had been a day of terrible errors. He had almost died because the army had made the erroneous decision to substitute less effective drugs for their usual anesthetics, rendering a North Korean POW conscious enough to pull the pin from his grenade. Which (a mistake on its own) he had been left in his possession as he was carried into surgery. The crisis had been defused - literally - by the efforts of their chief surgeon and their priest, but Charles remained shaken. Death was typically an opponent he faced cooly across the operating table; today the hooded visage had crept up behind him and held his long, sharp blade to his throat. A cold band still lingered there- the precise width of the blade. 

Acting out of prejudices and a potent mixture of fear and shock, he had deeply hurt the one person in the world he sought to ward from harm: his baby sister, Honoria. Jilted because she refused to convert to her fiancée’s religion, she was now grieving the life she would have had… and Charles had only made it worse by acting the perfect scoundrel. He believed that Honoria would forgive him in time; he was less certain that he would be able to forgive himself. 

Sifting through his thoughts, he sat in shadow, staring away and seeing nothing, wanting to blame Korea and the repugnant conditions of the camp for his behavior but knowing he would have been just as boorish if he had been in Boston with its symphony and restaurants and utter obliviousness to the police action taking place on the other side of the world. 

His regret-tinged reverie was broken not when a blanket was settled about his broad shoulders, but only when the laces of his hated, heavy boots were loosened. He looked down to see Corporal Maxwell Klinger placing a crate under his feet as a sort of makeshift footstool. “You can sleep here,” the Corporal said quietly. “But your back will hurt tomorrow if you don’t at least fold up your jacket and put it in between you and the chair.”

Charles stared, overcome at this unexpected and undeserved series of kindnesses. “Klinger?”

“You okay, Major?” 

“I will be in time. Thank you.” 

Winchester had witnessed it before: the way Klinger lit up when he praised him or recognized him for some useful act. The Corporal would have smiled for anyone- but he nearly  _ sparkled  _ for him. Charles believed that he knew what it meant. He believed, further, that Klinger’s (however eccentrically expressed) professionalism was of such a caliber that he would never speak a word about it, unless Charles spoke first. He’d had no intention of ever doing so, but in the wake of nearly being blown to pieces, he was reminded that life was short - should it not also include some measure of sweetness? 

He took the clerk’s hand. Wide-eyed, Klinger watched him turn it and press his mouth to the center. Pleasant shivers swept through him, but he didn’t draw away. When Winchester tugged at his thin, fine wrist, he went, but not before holding up a finger to say “wait” and fastening the latch on the door. 

Winchester knew why he did it. Klinger didn’t care about being caught (the man had ridden naked through camp on a horse); he  _ did  _ care about Charles’ reputation, however, and his rank. When he returned to his side, the Major pulled him into his lap, aligning them in such a way that Klinger’s thoughtfulness was palpably rewarded. One hand on his shoulder to keep himself upright, Klinger moved gently, almost shyly, against him, pulse jumping in his throat. 

Winchester stroked his back, ran his hands up his sides, buried his hands in waves of dark hair. Klinger moved with and in those hands, gave himself over to them, arching and twisting as if to increase the surface area under his fingers. Limber as the Corporal was, it was a struggle to do away with his clothes because he wouldn’t stay still. 

“You are making me long for your skirt-wearing days,” Charles confessed, gripping his hip to loosen his belt and open his fly. 

Shaking with happiness, Klinger echoed his movements and made tiny excited sounds at the mere sight of him. It was very flattering. This time, when he brought Klinger into his lap, he surged up like a dancer; he was transformed by the act of being wanted. 

Winchester sighed, buried himself between his thighs, and welcomed the shockwaves of friction that resulted, running through him like current. He didn’t neglect Klinger, either, stroking him in time with the motion of his thrusts, praising his sweet responsiveness, his beauty, the singular sound of him gasping out his name over and over again. Winchester’s voice did as much for the Corporal as his touch did; Klinger shook harder as Winchester begged him to allow him to see him spill. “Let me have this of you, Max. Say my name and let go.” 

Klinger held out as long as he could, but slumped forward onto Charles’ chest afterwards, still shaking. Winchester held him, cleaned him off, rubbed his back, kissed his hair, and smiled when his dazed eyes met his. He tried to speak but left off to bend in a way Winchester wouldn’t have believed possible, long-necked grace allowing him to take him so deep and so fast that the startled Major rocked back in the chair to escape the intensity of the sensation. Klinger smiled around him, worked him until he was close, then drew back up. Charles made a disappointed sound at this loss of contact, but Klinger just winked and guided him to where he wanted. 

Winchester’s eyes went wide. “Max!”

“Shh. I’ve got this.” 

“You do not have to,” he began, but Klinger kissed him quiet. 

Winchester closed his eyes and let himself feel. The clinical part of him was nervous about what Klinger was undertaking on behalf of his pleasure; the sensual part of him was aching to thrust, quivering at being held back as Klinger opened himself and brought him slowly inside. He tried to maintain his usual stoic silence but it was impossible, especially when Klinger answered, moaning for him. 

Winchester felt himself enveloped at the exact moment he heard the air go out of Klinger’s lungs. “Max? Are you okay?” 

“Yeah. Better than. Go ahead, Major.”

“I do not wish to hurt you. You set the pace.” 

_ Ride you ‘til you break and make you feel like you can’t get enough of breaking _ ? asked Klinger’s slow smile.  _ I can do that _ . 

He started slow, hips rolling, sweet, profane compliments falling from his lips; his words made Winchester throb inside of him,  _ for  _ him. As he gained speed, his words were replaced with panting breaths. By the end, as he milked Charles through those final moments, those breaths had become cries. 

Despite this, Klinger recovered first, tidying up. The last thing he said before walking into the night was, “I wasn’t kidding about the jacket, Major. Surgery’s hard enough without hurting your back.” 

***

Charles had heard the adage that trouble comes in threes, but returning to the Swamp marked the inauguration (or, at least the realization) of the third terrible error of the day. 

Worse, he didn’t make it inside the door before that error was pointed out. Pierce was sitting outside of the tent nursing a martini so dry it ought to have been garnished with miniature cacti. He didn’t even look up to ask, “What the hell were you thinking?” 

“I beg your pardon?” His body still sang from the rewarding exertion of sex and his thoughts were a pleasant film reel starring a very flexible Corporal with very toned calves ( _ From spending half of his time in heels _ ? Winchester wondered). 

Hawkeye did something then that went against his very makeup; he abandoned his glass. Then he stood, grabbed Winchester by the lapels and dragged him to the rickety structure that housed the generators. He wanted to yell and he didn’t want to be overheard, not because he gave a damn about Winchester and potentially embarrassing him, but because there was a third party involved. 

“Pierce? What is the meaning of this?” In the time since he’d come to the 4077th, he’d come to regard Pierce as an ally if not a best friend, and he couldn’t think of a thing he’d done to fracture their strange bond. 

“That sweet kid you just got done bedding.” 

Winchester blanched. “How?”

“Porthole window.”

He summoned as much dignity as he could. “Do correct me if I’m wrong, Pierce, but haven’t you cut quite a swathe through the nursing staff?” 

Pierce shook his head, looking disappointed now as well as angry. “Did you  _ hear _ yourself earlier, Charles? It’s one thing to joke back and forth with Klinger. But you spent the day insulting his skin color, his class status, his family, and his intelligence. You don’t get to do that and then do  _ him _ .”

The words struck him and, as he remembered, he wished Pierce had just socked him in the jaw. It would have been easier to bear.  _ Klinger _ had even blown up at him over it, withholding one of his sister’s letters in an attempt to get him to say “olive skin makes good kin.” He’d been too angry at the time to pay attention to this lower class attempt at poetry. 

“You were upset about your sister marrying an Italian,” Pierce went on, twisting the knife. “Are you telling me you’re going to take home some poor immigrant kid from Toledo? Your new lay is dark skinned, Charles,  _ and  _ he’s an immigrant  _ and _ English isn’t his first language. What do you think about him now?” 

_ Oh, God. What must  _ **_Klinger_ ** _ be thinking?  _ Did the Corporal imagine that Charles saw his rank and station in life as passkeys that allowed him to take advantage - even  _ intimate  _ advantage - of others? Remorse made his shake. “I was so angry with Honoria,” he murmured, “I paid little attention to what I said… or to whom.” 

“Well, I’ll bet Klinger remembers.  _ How could you do that to him _ ? You know how he feels about you! You must if you got him into bed. He wouldn’t have asked you.”

“No. He did not.” 

“So, care to tell me when, exactly, you’re going to smash his heart to pieces so I can know to be around?” 

Charles sighed. He deserved this. “Pierce, it is not to you that I need make my amends, but perhaps you will allow me to leave this charming rattletrap and do so in a more timely manner if I tell you that I’ve no intention of harming the Corporal. Indeed, it shall be my charge and my privilege, should he permit it, to protect him from a world filled with prejudice.” 

Pierce looked suspicious. “I’ve always thought he’d be good in bed. He must be better than I thought if he broke through all that old world snobbery of yours after one fuck.” 

Charles flinched. “Pierce… you may insult me in any manner you contrive. I have more than earned it. What you may  _ not  _ do is insult those who are under my protection. Hear this as the warning it is, Captain. Speak like that again and I will see you regret it. Now move.” 

Hawkeye let him go, but he would live up to his nickname in this. A clear-seeing crusader, he would watch and see, for himself, if Charles lived up to this unexpected change of heart. 

***

Klinger was on his knees measuring yards of fabric. The stuff was egg cream with gold bits of glitter in it - a princess day dress color, Charles imagined. 

“What is this meant for, Max?”

Pinking shears in hand, crooked spray of pale blossoms in his hair, the Corporal looked up with a smile. “Hiya, Major. Just… felt festive I guess.” 

Charles knew why and his hands ached to be buried in that cloth. “I owe you an apology.”

Klinger looked worried and the Syrian hibiscus blush that had adorned his cheeks at the Major’s entrance blew away like petals in the wind. “For what happened in the office?”

“If you require one, certainly. Did I…” He braced himself, reminded himself that he was a physician. Granted, he’d been overcome at the time… but surely not so badly that he’d failed to notice or had misread the man’s pain? “I did not hurt you, did I?”

Klinger laughed at him – a light sound like bells gossiping together in a soft wind. “Nope. Weren’t you listening?”

“I was… overwrought.. the bomb…”

“Honoria,” Max corrected.

“Yes. I love her so very much, Maxwell.”  _ And yet, I am so rarely worthy of her. It is a pattern I seem made to repeat. _

“I know.”

“I existed as her protector. This proposal, failed though it was… she no longer needs me, Max. Some other man will have the care of her… and what, then, shall I be?”

“She’ll always need you, Major. You’re the only brother she’s got.”

It was sound logic. “If she deigns to forgive me, perhaps.” He regarded the gentle creature who had completely set aside his work at his entrance; Max seemed to lean toward him, his very bearing fixed on shoring him up. “I should be striving to reach her even now. The only reason I am not is that I needs must first set things right between us.”

Max waved him off. “Go on. I don’t wanna hold you up, Major. Patch things up with Nori. I’ll be here.”

_ Nori? You will like that, sister dear _ . “No, Max. I am… I was most horribly cruel to you.”

“You didn’t mean it.”

“I did. I spoke out of prejudice and elitism and  _ I was wrong _ – but I did hold those beliefs before I came to the 4077 th .”  _ Before I beheld you. _

“You couldn’t have meant it, Major baby, and kissed me that way. Not unless you were using me - and you’re not built for that.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Two reasons. I woulda seen it by now – with other guys or gals here. And I wouldn’t have fallen for you if you were a bad person.”

Charles wished it might be true – that the goodness in Max might respond only to goodness in someone else – but, “I fear that you love is a mirage. A reflection of your goodness transposed on a frame ill made to bear it.”  _ My precious shield of honor… how thin and pitiful a thing _ . 

“Nori loves you, too. Is  _ she _ wrong, Major?”

His behavior over the past twenty-four hours said she might well be. “Honoria has lived a sheltered life. She has few men to compare me to, I fear. And I may well have damaged her regard past repair this time, even if yours is still intact. Do you forgive me, Max?”

“Yeah.”

“And if we had not…?”

“Fit together really, really well in that uncomfortable chair? Yeah. I still would.”

Charles flushed to remember his gentle acrobatics. “I will do better for you,” he promised. “No one – especially me – will say anything like that ever again.”

“Good luck, Major. I’m used to it. But if you’re trying ta tell me that you’ve started to feel something for me, that’s real swell.” He beamed.

“I felt it before now, Maxwell. And though you could do better and probably should, say you’ll be mine, won’t you? I need you.”

Klinger tilted his head to one side, uncertain. “Because of the bomb?”

“No.” He looked down, ashamed. “Because you are the only good thing here.”

“I don’t want to get hurt, Major, if this is like that time you got into those pills and you wake up and change your mind.”

“I will do no such thing, my dear. If you will come along with me, I shall prove it to you.”

In the office, the Major looked expectantly at the one man in the camp who actually understood the phone, eyes purposefully averted from the wooden chair.

“Boston?” Klinger guessed.

“If you would be so kind.”

Klinger started the process, then shot him a look. “Shoulda sat in your lap when you wanted to call before,” he muttered. “Maybe you’d have been nicer.”

Charles sighed, but took the phone when it was offered, could see it ringing on a familiar bedside table. Klinger flashed him a should-I-stay-or-go look and Charles pulled him into his lap and bit back a groan.

“I th-thought about not accepting, Ch-Charles,” Honoria said by way of greeting.

“You would have been well within your rights to refuse to speak with me, Honey-vine. But I am sorry.”

She made a disgusted sound. “You do g-guilt so well. I’ve n-never liked that about you.”

“How are you, love?”

“As good as any j-jilted woman c-can be, I sup-pose.”

“It was very serious, this love affair?” She had never written to him of it, and she had a wild streak, this kid sister of his.

“It was an e-escape hatch,” she admitted. “You are q-quite sure you do n-not need me over there?”

“I am frightened enough, thank you. But I need you always, though I do not deserve you.”

She laughed. “Go do s-something useful, d-doctor. You’re forgiven.”

“I shall, but I have more penance to do yet, my dear. I know how you enjoy that. There is, ah, someone I wish you to meet.”

In his arms, Maxwell frantically shook his head. He did not require this.

“I, ah, I know this may be coming at the wrong time. However, I know that you will understand my eagerness if I ask if you would be open to, ah, expanding our shared household?”

She thought unpleasant things about her spinster self for a moment before she realized what he meant. What he must mean. They had never spoken of it, but she couldn’t remember a time when she had not known. 

“Honoria Evelynne Winchester, may I introduce someone I have written to you about so many times? Meet Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger.”

“Holy hell!”

“That is vulgar, Honoria, and you are frightening my Corporal.”

“I… I do ap-apologize, Corporal. You might h-have prepared me, Ch-Charles!”

“This seemed much more fun.”  _ And oh, so necessary for Max _ .

“Fun!? Oh, he  _ is _ g-good for you, Charles.”

“Indeed. He is teaching me to be a better man. An, ah,… a far less prejudiced one, you will be pleased to hear.”

She  _ was _ pleased. She was over the moon. Charles thought this would help with her shattered wedding dreams. She could plan his wedding instead. He hoped it might be a sort of  _ Taming of the Shrew _ situation. Perhaps, with him paired off, the gods of matrimony would shine kinder eyes on the better sibling. 

“Well? Let me s-speak to the man, Ch-Charles.”

Charles surrendered the phone with a dispatch that made Max giggle; the proud Major was clearly accustomed to taking orders from his little sister. Then he gentled, became soft and shy as he said, “Hello, ma’am. It’s… it’s such a kick to meet you – even like this. Really.”

Charles wished he had used his typical “hiya,” – it charmed him – but then he realized something, listening to the two people he loved best in the world. The warmth in Maxwell matched the goodness in Honoria. And undeserving as he was, Charles had somehow secured both of them. He swore in that moment that he would do everything he could to earn, deserve, cherish, and protect them.

Honoria was looking for a similar oath from the man who would be, she grinned wildly to think it, her brother-in-law! “L-look after him for me, won’t you C-Corporal? Until I can w-welcome you both  _ home _ .”

“I promise.”

***

Later they lay tangled up. Max held up his hand, contrasting the shade of their skin.

“A pretty mix,” Charles agreed, twining their fingers.

“Wait til’ you see all the colors I dress you in.”

Charles just sighed and held on tight.

End! 

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
